A goal is an outcome to which an action is directed.
How should we understand directedness?
The standard idea is that we understand it in terms of mental states and processes—intentions
or motor representations or whatever.
But there is an alternative: we can understand directedness in terms of a set
of problems to be solved.
Let me explain ...
Which outcomes are achievable?
For each outcome, which means of achieving it are available?
Of the various means of achieving a given outcome, which best balance cost against well-suitedness?
[Of the various means of achieving a given outcome, which best balance cost against well-suitedness?]
So there you are at the dinner table and you
can reach across and take the paper.
It's just in that kind of borderline where doing that
would be a little bit rude.
Or you could ask Lisa to pass it to you,
but that's going to involve a bit of an interruption
and a bit of a wait while Lisa puts her
fork down and everything.
So you've got to work out of the different ways
of getting that pepper, which is the best balance.
Of the achievable outcomes, which best balance cost against expected benefit?
For an action to be directed to an outcome is for it to occur because there is one or more outcome in relation to which problems such as these have been, or appear to have been, solved.
---
Having settled on an outcome and means, when should these be maintained?
...
An action is an event that is directed to an outcome.
In performing an action, there's a set of questions that,
one way or another, have to be answered, and we
can use that to characterise the notion of directness.
For an action to be directed to an outcome is
to the action to occur, because there's one or more
outcome in relation to which problems such of these have
been or appear to have been solved.
So instead of thinking of directness as constituted by intention
or any other kind of particular state or process, let's
make a shift and think about directness in terms of
answering questions.
There has to be a process by which these problems are solved, of course.
But we specify directedness in terms of the problems to be solved, not the processes
which solve them.
Because the goal-directed process (+motor processes) solves several of these problems, we can
see it as underpinning instrumental action.
But here's an objection.
None of this could be any use to us in solving the
problem of action, because we've already presupposed a notion of
action, even in raising the question and answering it.
So my first thought is, look, this is really no
use to us at all.
It's a completely hopeless direction.
To repeat: First thought: we are assuming a notion of action so cannot use this to
elucidate the notion of action.
Second thought: None of this depends on the things we are talking about being actions.
We can replace action with event and things will go find
The objection is that we can't use
this to solve the problem of action because we've presupposed
a notion of action.
But actually.
Nothing that we've said so far really has to be
specific to action.
So we could rewrite this to say something about events and we
would get just the same thing.
We're constructing a notion of directness
by constructing a theory.
The theory says, look, there's a bunch of questions that
have to be answered.
And answering these questions is characteristic of action.
So we can say, look, well, we're just going to
say for an event to be directed to an outcome
is for there to be an outcome that's relevant to
problems such as these having been solved or appearing from
the point of view of the agent or individual to
have been solved.
So now we've got a notion of goal-directedness that doesn't
presuppose a notion of action at all.
And then we can do something really, really simple.
We can say that an action is an event
that's directed to an outcome.
If we return to the objections, you can see that they are now solved ...
But before I do that I want to check everyone understands.
